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Pope Leo XIV gives his blessing to visitors and pilgrims at the conclusion of his weekly general audience in the Paul VI Audience Hall at the Vatican Aug. 27, 2025.
CNS photo/Lola Gomez
August 27, 2025
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OSV News photo/Mario Tomassetti, Vatican Media/Jean-Matthieu Gautier, KNA via CPP
This is the text of the catechesis and appeal from Pope Leo XIV’s Aug. 27 general audience.
Catechetical Cycle – Jubilee 2025. Jesus Christ our hope. III. The Passover of Jesus. 4. The arrest. “Whom are you looking for?” (Jn 18:4)
Dear brothers and sisters,
Today we focus on a scene that marks the beginning of Jesus' Passion: the moment of His arrest in the Garden of Olives. The Evangelist John, with his usual depth, does not present a frightened Jesus, one who flees or hides. On the contrary, he shows us a free man, who steps forward and speaks, facing with an open face the hour when the light of the greatest love can be revealed.
“Jesus, knowing all that was about to happen to Him, came forward and said to them, ‘Whom are you looking for?’ ” (Jn 18:4). Jesus knows. Yet He decides not to back down. He surrenders. Not out of weakness, but out of love. A love so full, so mature, that He does not fear rejection. Jesus is not captured: He allows Himself to be captured. He is not the victim of an arrest, but the author of a gift. This gesture embodies a hope of salvation for our humanity: knowing that, even in the darkest hours, we can remain free to love to the end.
When Jesus replies, "I am He," the soldiers fall to the ground. This passage is mysterious because this expression, in Biblical revelation, recalls the very name of God: "I am." Jesus reveals that God's presence manifests itself precisely where humanity experiences injustice, fear and loneliness. It is precisely there that the true light is ready to shine without fear of being overwhelmed by the advancing darkness.
In the dead of night, when everything seems to be falling apart, Jesus shows that Christian hope is not an escape, but a decision. This attitude is the fruit of a profound prayer in which we do not ask God to spare us suffering, but for the strength to persevere in love, aware that the life freely offered out of love cannot be taken from us by anyone.
“If you seek me, let them go” (John 18:8). At the moment of His arrest, Jesus is not concerned about His own salvation: He only wants His friends to leave. This demonstrates that His sacrifice is a true act of love. Jesus allows Himself to be captured and imprisoned by the guards only so that they will release His disciples.
Jesus lived every day of His life in anticipation of this dramatic and sublime hour. Therefore, when it arrives, He has the strength not to seek escape. His heart knows well that losing one's life for love is not a failure, but it possesses a mysterious fertility. Like the grain of wheat that, fallen to the earth, does not remain alone, but dies and becomes fruitful.
Jesus, too, is troubled by a path that seems to lead only to death and the end. But He is equally convinced that only a life lost for love is ultimately found again. This is where true hope lies: not in the attempt to avoid pain, but in the conviction that, even in the heart of the most unjust suffering, lies the seed of new life.
And us? How often do we defend our lives, our plans, our certainties, without realizing that, in doing so, we remain alone. The logic of the Gospel is different: only that which is given flourishes; only love that becomes gratuitous can restore trust, even where all seems lost.
The Gospel of Mark also tells us of a young man who, when Jesus is arrested, flees naked (Mk 14:51). It is an enigmatic but deeply evocative image. We too, in trying to follow Jesus, experience moments when we are caught off guard and stripped of our certainties. These are the most difficult moments, in which we are tempted to abandon the path of the Gospel, because love seems an impossible journey. Yet, at the end of the Gospel, it is a young man Himself who announces the resurrection to the women, no longer naked, but dressed in white.
This is the hope of our faith: our sins and our hesitations do not prevent God from forgiving us and giving us back the desire to follow Him again, in order to make us capable of giving our lives for others.
Dear brothers and sisters, let us too learn to entrust ourselves to the good will of the Father, allowing our lives to be a response to the good received. In life, controlling everything is useless. It is enough to choose each day to love freely. This is true hope: knowing that, even in the darkness of trial, God's love sustains us and allows the fruit of eternal life to ripen within us.
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